The second installment of FTN Analytics will be The Sunshine State, as it is home to two factors which will undoubtedly play a significant role in the upcoming election: an increasingly diverse population and well known as a hotly contested swing state.

A dearth of data has led this analysis to be somewhat briefer than the last, but we’ve uncovered some very pertinent findings nonetheless, and we think they’ll be of interest to you.

Demographics

In the union since 1845, the state has been home to Seminoles, the Spanish, Blacks, Cubans, and most recently retirees, all leaving their impressions on the state.

The current demographics of Florida are complex, it ranks third in the nation for populations of every race: Whites (10.8m), Hispanics (4.8m), Blacks (3.4m), and sadly, even Jews (850k), all of whom subscribe to tribal politics to some degree. This heterogeneity creates an erratic electorate.

However, even a cursory glance is enough to confirm that the same trend applies here as it does in other states, Florida is turning brown and blue. As shown in Fig 1, the state has gone form a respectable 76% white in 1980, to a more mediocre 64% today*, and medium growth projections have us slated for minority status by 2034.

Fig 1. Demographic Proportion by year, medium growth projection.

*Sadly, Jews are considered White by the census so the White proportion is actually lower.

As with Texas, the total number of Whites increased from approximately 5m in 1970 to nearly 11m, and will peak out at around 12.5m, although Jews will account for a sizable portion. However, the growth in the White population has been completely outperformed by Hispanics and even Blacks. To put it into perspective: In the last five years, Florida’s Hispanic population grew 18 percent — six times more than non-Hispanic whites, and more than twice as fast as blacks.

Fig 2. Replacement level procreation

Adding to White woes is the average age. Due to Florida’s status as a retirement paradise, the age distribution heavily favors minorities, who make up the bulk of the younger generations, meaning that this trend will not change unless the state starts to actively encourage young Whites to settle there, or forcibly deport minorities.

A further point to note is the fact that Florida follows a typical pattern with Whites being the absolute rural majority, and urban counties like Jacksonville, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade being completely abandoned to the whim of coloreds and Jews, surprisingly.

The Curious Case of Dade County

Nowhere is the displacement more visible than in Dade County, where the White population is close to zero. Adding to this, in 2010, 51% of Dade County’s population was foreign born, with 49% being naturalized American citizens. Of foreign-born residents, 93.0% were born in Latin America.

To put it a little differently: In the 1950s about 80% of the county population were English-speaking non-Hispanic whites. As of 2010 58.5% of the population natively spoke Spanish, with about half of them having low English fluency. 27.2% of the population spoke only English.

Fortunately, Miami-Dade isn’t all of Florida. Here’s how a medium growth scenario is going to play out on County Level:

Politics

And now for the real challenge, trying to estimate the political consequences of all this diversity. Since 1964, Florida has gone Republican nine times and Democrat four, with a streak of seven wins in a row for the Republicans between 1980 and 2004. This merits Florida a title as a traditional red state.

Fig 3. Outcome by election

Fig 4. Republican vote trend.

Though the last two elections went to the Democrats, it was primarily driven by a black voting block so large and partisan that it’s downright anomalous. Even so, the last election swung blue by about 75 000 votes, or less than one percent, and there’s no indication that anything similar is about to happen this year. In fact, we predict Florida will come out Republican in 2016. Why do we think so? Because of a very strange electorate.

I’ve heard of Hispanic renovators, but Hispanic Republicans?

Florida’s Hispanic population is far more disparate than either its Whites or Blacks. There’s a Cuban minority of about 1.6 million, or one third of the total number of Hispanics, which has historically voted for the GOP, and turns out at raters higher than non-Cuban Hispanics. In 2012, just over 50% of Cubans voted for Romney, compared to a still respectable 32% for other Hispanics. Now, trends show a shift towards the Democrats for these diamond-in-the-rough Cubans, and combined with the huge growth, they are guaranteed to turn more blue as time passes. Not only that, there’s also a large amount of Puerto Rican immigrants coming into Central Florida to further bolster the Democratic vote. However, a mitigating factor is lower voter participation, it would seem Hispanic millennials are even less interested in voting than their parents.

Jews, the poisoned skittle.

Whites by themselves represent a large majority of the electorate, for now. However, there’s a very large number of Jews, especially in the urban areas, who are poisoning the well by voting democrat in droves. Per exit polls from the 2012 election, Obama received 66% and Romney 30% of the Jewish vote, almost as lopsided as the Hispanic vote.

To put this into perspective, the White and Jewish total went 61% Romney and 39% Obama. In other words, Jews and Whites are diametrically opposed. Had Romney done 1.5 points better, he would’ve won the state. The good news is that the Jewish mean age is very high and they have very low fertility, so the problem is solving itself as we speak.

Blacks, the fading monster vote.

Jews and Hispanics aside, what was truly astounding about the 2012 Elections was the Black Monster vote, with a turnout 2.1% higher than Whites and 95% Democrat. Whatever you may think of blacks, they certainly have their in-group preference in order. The good news is that we’re not likely to see numbers like these again until the Democrats run another Black candidate. There is absolutely no indication that HRC inspires Black voters. Likely, 2016 Black voter turnout will is look very similar 2004 Bush/Kerry election, with widespread Black voter apathy.
In order to give a more likely prediction of how demographics is going to influence the vote moving forward, it was necessary to calibrate our model around these statistic anomalies, and we’re arrived at a conclusion we’re pretty satisfied with. Bear in mind that this is a model that only accounts for racial voting, and not the qualities of future candidates, and as such will not be fully accurate. Regardless, here’s how we predict the political landscape for Florida will look moving forward:

Conclusion

Florida is in the balance, but has every chance at redemption. The White electorate is large enough that even a slight tilt in our direction is enough to keep the state red for a good while longer, although like everything else it will turn blue eventually. As always, Republicans are wasting ten times more time and energy appealing to a minority demographic which is already showing a much larger Republican interest than elsewhere, thus effectively defeating themselves.